Doesn't life move quickly these days? Sometimes it feels like we are so obsessed with getting things done that we have forgotten how to enjoy doing them. Sometimes, I think our modern living blinkers are masking the glorious technicolour world around us.
I'm on a train at the moment - doing a train journey I haven't done since I was a very young child. The route takes us through some beautiful countryside, beside the mouth of the mighty Bann,
along the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, under Mussenden Temple and past Downhill beach to the point where the shores of Lough Foyle become the banks of the River Foyle. It is a particularly beautiful journey. Not that anyone seems to notice.I'm surrounded by people on laptops studying spreadsheets and filling out reports; all around me people are on the phone to their office, to their husbands, to their
friend Pat who moved away ten years ago to marry an english man and so doesn't know the tragic events in Stranocum this week or the trouble anticipated at the band parade in Rasharkin tonight.I don't blame them. The pace of life orders that we see journeys, not as events, but as wasted time. Time that technology can harness and make useful
. It makes me yearn for the time when people used to dress up for a flight in a plane, a time when whole families would get on the train and head for the sea. Days when the journey was part of the experience - 
not an inconvenient means to the end.
So, as we pass through God's beautiful creation, I smile wryly at all those around me who seem oblivious to it... And I spend the journey typing a blog about it on my Blackberry.
4 comments:
hello!
i dont have a clue how i missed all your last four or five posts, my list doesnt seem to update you....
anyway, i remember the days of dressing up to take a flight somewhere. we didnt really do trains & boats.
the journey can be a wonderful thing but we often dont appreciate it.
off track a bit but connected: i watch people on public transport and some of the journeys they are taking are probably routine and ugly so looking out the window might not be pleasant but i still dont understand why nobody seems to just take time to think these days. theres always an ipod or a phone or something
am i the only person who just lets my mind drift?
true - but I can't help but think I spend a little too much time mind drifting.
Actually, while people watching on the return trip, I spotted a young South African guy who spent the entire time staring out the window with a fixed grin - so I guess there are still some people out there who appreciate the journey.
I was happy to stumble upon some new entries from you at 01:50am.
I agree with you completly, and yet saying so makes me a complete hypocrite.
Im now at the point where I can't walk anywhere without my iPod.
It's almost OCD.
I know that I dont need it to acheive what i've set out to do, and that it really doesnt make my journey faster, contrary to my own beliefs.
I guess people just need to realise that there's more to life thank technology.
Why wouldnt someone read a book as opposed to check the updates on their facebook every 5 minutes, or watch some TV?
They might discover something more mind boggling than the internet and such, If they would just open their eyes!
What are you doing up at 2am!? Don't you know you have school in... um... a week.
But it fills me with pride to know that I know a teenager who recognises the possibility that a world might exist outside TV and computer cubes... but don't be too hard on ipods - some journeys are even better with a sound track.
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